Advertising: Banks get personal

Another week, another bank. It's that bad. "Financial services" – banks and building societies and insurance companies – absolutely litter the screen. And they're always trying to make themselves interesting in deeply non-credible ways: that's the desperate thing. For decades they've tried to be funny; later (the Nineties) they attempted to have Big Thoughts about the world and your life, or to be design sensitive and civilised.

But we know that banks at scale aren't like that. They can't be. They're built on systems, they have tight hierarchies. They don't breed interesting risk-takers and their employees don't dress well. Their products are, most of the time, very similar. They know you know that too. That's why most people don't change their current account providers that often. The competition is all about getting them young – lots of approaches to students – and cross-selling new products, like pensions and loans and mortgages, which just might tempt you away. All this means increasingly alienating systems and less and less human contact and common sense.

Barclays' Openplan, the giant lolly people, have been banging on about the novelty of their new account, which combines current account, savings and mortgage (which must mean amazing new software, of course). Last week, however, First Direct was talking about its particular unique proposition. It's people – people as opposed to robots. It's played for laughs but it's absolutely clear the joke's on the great world of systems and recorded messages.

So we have to have Vic Reeves. Vic's a sort of maître'd in a Diamond Jim outfit with a bootlace tie, telling people in a vast café they can choose between two waiters: Alan, who's very nice and clean, or the Robot. That's the Robotic Voice Choice. The Robot – a joke robot made of cardboard boxes and lightbulbs – does everything wrong. He smashes plates, catches fire and falls over. He's a Vic Reeves/Shooting Stars kind of robot.

"First Direct," says Arthur Smith as voiceover (what a project it would be for a "Cult Studs" student to analyse Arthur's voice; its increasingly faint south London mateyness, its dark brownness, its educated structures), "has real people – there are no scripts, no 'Press the hash key now'."

I put it to the test. I rang the number on the screen and got someone straight away who sounded like Jane Horrocks when she's playing up the Northern. She asked me if I'd got any burning questions and told me how First Direct suited her because of her hours. If they're all like her, First Direct is really on to something.